The Department of Homeland Security’s chief investigations arm this week launched a broader nationwide campaign to investigate and prosecute naturalized citizens who may have improperly voted in past elections before they became citizens, according to documents reviewed by MS NOW, an effort spurring deep concern among law enforcement agents that the administration’s true goal is to intimidate voters from participating in future elections.
Agents with DHS Homeland Security Investigations were notified last week of the new initiative, in which agents in all field offices are required to review both open and closed cases of suspected illegal voting by noncitizen immigrants, according to the documents and three people familiar with the plan.
Launched at the direction of the White House, the people said, the program requires agents to determine if naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. Investigators are then asked to submit reports to the White House detailing each case in which they declined to bring charges, the people said. An administration official speaking on background disputed that characterization.
Voting experts have consistently said the Trump administration’s claims of widespread fraudulent voting by immigrants are wildly exaggerated and the number of such incidents is very small.
“In accordance with Executive Order 1428 (Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections), which mandates enhanced federal oversight and enforcement of election integrity … HSI has launched a nationwide program to investigate allegations of voter fraud,” the memo said.
But the memo, which is headlined “Potential Voter Fraud – Denaturalization,” calls for HSI agents to focus largely on immigrants who eventually have become naturalized citizens, asking HSI offices to identify naturalized citizens who may have registered to vote or voted illegally, by doing so before they were officially citizens.
The initiative has escalated dire concerns among federal prosecutors and other law enforcement agents about the likelihood these probes will frighten a broad category of voters from going to the polls in upcoming midterms, according to law enforcement sources who spoke to MS NOW.
Two current and former DHS officials told MS NOW that they have never heard of an initiative like this being run by the department ever before, calling it “not normal.”
The White House started targeting noncitizens suspected of voter fraud as early as last summer and tasked some HSI agents with investigating and seeking prosecutions. The White House handed more than 1,000 names of noncitizens suspected of committing voter fraud to HSI, with the expectation that it would result in criminal prosecutions for nearly all of those individuals, a former HSI official with knowledge of the initiative told MS NOW.
The Friday memo to agents represents a notable escalation in that effort, one that now appears to extend beyond current noncitizens to naturalized citizens and their conduct prior to being a citizen.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the memo shows the department’s “continuing efforts to implement the President’s Executive Order from nearly a year ago by identifying individuals who appear to have broken the law — and the only people who should be concerned by this are criminals,” she said.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered noncitizen voters,” she continued.
“Noncitizen voting is a crime. Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”
MS NOW has also learned that senior DHS and Justice Department appointees have held a series of meetings to discuss sending law enforcement to polling places to “secure” elections. This has also ramped up legal concerns for law enforcement and military personnel, according to people involved in their conversations, given that a federal law makes it a crime for military personnel or armed law enforcement to deploy to a polling location in a way that intimidates voters.
DHS did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
In an interview with NBC earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened a federal takeover of some state elections due to what he calls the threat of noncitizens illegally voting.
“These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally,” he said.
The driving force behind the sweeping HSI investigations is White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to three people relaying concerns about the program. His office has held weekly meetings on the launch of the plan in recent weeks with both DHS and Justice Department leadership, the people said.
Miller is a key proponent of stripping foreign-born citizens of their citizenship as part of a broader deportation strategy, pushing the Justice Department to step up investigations into whether new citizens engaged in any crime or fraud.
Miller has long promoted false and debunked claims that millions of illegal aliens vote in elections, skewing the results to favor Democratic candidates. Last year, he called birthright citizenship an “atrocity” and called out the threat that immigrants — and their children who later gain legal citizenship by being born in America — present to Republican candidates in elections.
“Illegal aliens and their descendants are one of the largest voting blocs in the United States,” Miller said in December 2025, on the eve of the Supreme Court taking up a case that challenges the Constitution’s grant of birthright citizenship to people born in America. The court has yet to rule on the issue.
The DHS memo lays out five federal statutes HSI can use to charge naturalized citizens with felonies or misdemeanors if they voted before they became citizens, including false claims of citizenship, as well as registration and voter fraud.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem held a news conference in Maricopa County, Arizona, on Friday to tout her role in election security and promote the SAVE Act. She said that while states have primary responsibility for running elections, Congress has given her department additional powers and duties to take “mitigation measures” and ensure that “we have the right people voting.”
“Elections is another one of those critical infrastructure responsibilities that I have as well, and I would say that many people believe that it may be one of the most important things that we need to make sure we trust is reliable, and that when it gets to Election Day, that we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country through the days that we have, knowing that people can trust it.”
When asked by reporters to describe any specific cases of fraud in Arizona that concerned her, she could not name any.
“Oh, I’m sure there’s many of them,” Noem said.
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